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In these weeks they saw white beaches backed with palm trees that rustled and crackled in the
breeze, and high green mountains thick with brush no man had ever crawled through, and islands so
big there was no way to tell they weren't the mainland until you had sailed completely around one
and seen the same banyan tree from two directions. Kiril breathed it in and blew it out and took
energy from it all. At night he ran his hands along his back and felt the ridges of lash scars
there, asking: Who did this? I did? Not I. The other one.
The Young One.
He worked with the loading crews on cargo watches until sweat covered him in a fine sheen. He
helped trim and refit piping from the methane tanks and went with the boats to kelp beds to gather
the great underwater trees. On deck they hung in canvas-covered bags until they were cut and
stacked to dry. The smell was outrageous. In a few days, though, they were in neat odorless
blocks, boxed and stored for use in the methane-generation tanks. The wind was from the sea, and
the kelp was from the sea, and he knew, as he sweated in the day and felt his scars by night, that
the Trident did nothing to the sea that any other sea creature didn't do. He was no longer a
penitent, a traveler out of fear, but a crewman of the Trident.
Conversely, Bar-Woten enjoyed the work and grew familiar with the sea, but was not part of the
ship. He could never wholeheartedly join anything again. He worked with the boilers and the engine
and knew them for what they were, pieces of metal that filled and pumped and thrust, not parts of
a living thing.
Barthel's enthusiasm seldom reached him. Most of what the Khemite was learning from Avra
wouldn't be much use to them when they landed in the north and started the trek again. It seemed
to Bar-Woten that the original journey was losing steam. It was being absorbed into this lesser,
niggling trip across sea and between islands.
The central island of the Bicht was called Golumbine. It was twenty-five hundred kilometers
from Weggismarche. On extremely clear days, the Weggismarche Obelisk could be seen from its
northern side as an almost invisible line. The Trident sailed around the eastern tip, passing huge
pillars of granite topped with temples carved from solid rock thousands of years ago. Above the
beaches, in the craggy hills, three statues rose from the jungle. Each was a hundred meters tall,
made from bronze almost black with the centuries. The central sculpture was a woman dancing, her
right leg crooked to put her foot just over her left knee, both arms held out with palms up toward
the sky. She was rounded and stocky, built to hold her weight as much as to resemble a woman. Her
hair radiated in bronze sunbursts, a fan of metal twenty meters wide. To each side her companion
statues were serpents curling around central columns of rock white as snow, except where the
bronze had stained them green.
The Trident put into the deepwater port in the north of the island eight months after leaving
Mur-es-Werd, and the brown, light-baked inhabitants welcomed them to Golumbine. Liberty was
granted to all aboard the ship but a skeleton watch, of which Bar-Woten was a disgruntled member.
That evening the crew of the Trident feasted in a palace made of quartz. It was only the
climax of a heady day spent as near-heroes, welcomed after a long absence at sea by a kingdom the
Trident had saved from starvation during droughts three years before. The crew and officers were
led along the bund in the late afternoon after the day's business had been completed. They were
seated in a shady building of white wood slats and rattan roofing. While they were served drinks
in the hard rinds of sari, a juicy red-fleshed fruit, wagons pulled by large island deer parked in
front. They climbed in with drinks in hand and were driven along a path that snaked through an
orchard, rose gently to a hilltop, and after an exhilarating downhill gallop, presented them to
the stone city of Mappu.
Mappu was at least ten thousand years old, Avra told Kiril and Barthel as they rode in the
cart. A thousand years ago it had been rebuilt because its stones had grown too worn to be
dignified. In all that time it had known only three dynasties of royal families. Each had
succeeded without bloodshed under the decrees of the priests and priestesses of Dat, the goddess
whose statue rose on the island's eastern peninsula. There had been some war with western islands
during the past two hundred years, but Golumbine was now at peace. Its hundred-and-fifty-kilometer
length supported fifty thousand people comfortably.
She finished her history just as the carts pulled up to the crystalline palace. The officers
and crew stepped down and milled at the base of the white marble steps. Footprints had worn
grooves in the stone. Above the steps a half-circle arch of white quartz led to the alcove of the
main hall. The arch was covered with etched figurines engaged in every aspect of living --
fanning, herding, studying, building, eating, making love, giving birth, dying. . . coronation and
funerals, life and death in dizzying detail. Barthel patiently ignored them. Kiril was less
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circumspect. He walked with the others into the alcove beneath the arch, frustrated and curious to
examine it longer. They were taken into the main hall.
Curtains and banners hung rippling with red and green ribbons tied at their ends, suspended
from rafters of dark rich wood inlaid with bone and ivory friezes. Low tables covered by white
cloth with a bowl at each place setting awaited them, covering the floor of the hall. The men and
women and children of the Trident took their seats on pillows. The captain was given a seat of
honor next to a simple wooden throne.
At one side of the hall was a curtained stage. The curtains coursed with the activity behind
them, sequins twinkling in the red and green and blue silk.
Everyone stood. Whispers passed -- the Queen and King were approaching. Kiril expected long,
fine robes and blaring trumpets, but there was no fanfare or pomp. He could barely see the throne
over the heads of his crewmates, but what he did see caught him off guard.
The Queen and King were little more than a meter high, well proportioned and graying with age,
dressed in simple gray suits and lacking crowns or any overt signs of distinction. They took their
seats -- the Queen on her throne, the King at her feet. The meal was served.
The first course was clear broth soup with bits of crunchy vegetables floating in it, spiced
with curry. Then came a dish of wheat grains steamed and topped with a sauce of shellfish and
green beans. The main course was matu paka, beef and pork cooked in broth and butter and garnished
with thick leaves of sweet cabbage. Barthel picked at it without enthusiasm -- pork was a
forbidden item for him -- but Kiril thought he'd never tasted anything so delicious. A grain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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